Wick put her hands together. “I think that's new business, so have a burger or hotdog and we'll do a quick recap of things to do. I have some locations to scout that might shed light on why folks like Argyle are after me. No comments from the peanut gallery.”
Grunt nodded, then saluted and walked out after grabbing two hamburgers without bothering to take a bun. Wick cupped her mouth. “It won't take THAT long you jackass!”
Mister I held a hand up. “Grunt has the total clarity of someone who doesn't care about what they do not know or cannot remember.”
Corvayne folded his hands. “I cannot tell if that's a compliment or an insult.”
A meaty hand popped in from the hall and gave everyone a thumbs up.
*********************************************************************************
Wick got up and shut the door, then walked over to the white board. Everyone else took a moment to grab food as Wick wrote. Corvayne offered her a hot dog and she wolfed it down then went right back to writing.
“So, a few weeks back Corvayne arrives on the same day that Towers star forming. We don't know why those events happened the same day, but they did.”
Jake looked confused. “Wait, you guys act like you've known each other for a while, so wouldn't-”
Wick stopped writing. She looked between Jake, then Brines, then rolled her head a little. “Just tell him everyone.”
Corvayne said “Time Loop.” at the same time as Seru, Nyxion, Lady Blood Claw, and Mister I.
“Oh, okay. Makes a lot more sense why he was always so annoyed we asked him basic questions about running into an unknown hostile space.” Jake had a little notebook out. “How many loops? Is there anything you know is going to happen we need to work on here?”
Brines perked up. “Lottery numbers?”
Wick shook her head. “They changed this time.”
Corvayne raised a hand. “One and No, Jake. I think since we just included more people, let's start with the entire recap. We met about three months and some change in our perspective...”
“Might have been more.” Wick added.
“Wick and I might have met before. But we don't have clear memories of it, so I'm going to let that slide and focus on our story. I grew up in a warrior village and was a pariah.”
Gary gasped. “No! They couldn't have hated Master!”
Jake folded his arms. “Did you kill or r-”
“No Jake, they'd have branded me as well if I did either.”
“So you pissed off the village leader? Council of elders.”
“My dad hates me, no idea why. It might be a curse, but if you have more questions ask away.” Corvayne was starting to remember why he didn't get along with Jake.
The police officer just waved. “Well, we all like you, so don't get upset.” Wait, really?
Corvayne continued his part. “Anyway, we had a weird being called The Magus locked up. I got fed up with being picked on and went to talk to him, even though there was a rule to never disturb him.”
Jake tapped his note pad. “Was he a prisoner, or the real ruler?”
“Don't know, but probably the former. The Magus asked me to hunt down wizards, which was an odd request because he's the only thing that I've ever see do magic.”
Jake smirked. Gary was slapping the bed. “I knew it! You're the chosen one!”
Corvayne bit his lip. “No. Mr Magus was VERY clear that he was just trying to get me to do something since I was handy. He might have also cursed me while I was there, because in short order I was found, exiled, and soon after I got lost in a desert I had patrolled for years, sometimes months at a time without issues.”
“Which desert?” Jake asked. Seru was giving him a look that suggested some sort of re-assessment and Corvayne had a tremor of fear as he recalled dealing with them both together for five floors.
Wick stepped in. “We don't know. Not on this world. Also, Corvayne thinks some time passed, because it seemed like as he walked the sun rose and set quickly. The only thing he knows is what seemed a moment later, he was on Cascadia. He later learned it wasn't his world, and walked into town and bumped into me and Grunt. He kicked two guys who were robbing people's asses for us, and he seemed lost so I decided to help him, you know? Grunt agreed to have him work at the warehouse, and I ear marked him to help me with a possibly dangerous project to track bigfoot.”
Corvayne, knowing Wick better, thought it was possible that she was more worried about other people then Bigfoot.
“We go into the woods, and end up near the stairway when we get surrounded by hostile Bigfeet. They were probably monsters in another section of the same Tower. Corvayne used a bunch of his spear-fu moves but we got forced to retreat up the stairs and rather then make a last stand, Corvayne tried to commit suicide by jumping-”
Corvayne couldn't help but blurt out, thrusting with a hotdog like it was his spear. “I some how KNEW there was a portal.”
Wick kept writing her time-line without adding what he said nor changing the word 'suicidal'. “Okay sure. Anyway, we ended up in a weird world, saw some skeletons, and we couldn't go back, and had to fight goblins and monsters and eventually a dragon, and because it took a few days I got to know him better and the big lug grew on me.”
“I don't think of myself as a lug because it implies I'm not agile.”
Nyx laughed. “What happened, Corvayne? Tooting your own horn for once?”
“That or Argyle has very poor aim.” Corvayne nodded at Nyxion, and Wick cleared her throat and kept talking.
“So I asked him to help me, partner up with me because I wanted to keep looking into the paranormal and I wanted to get stronger because of people like Argyle.”
Jake tapped his pen. “Very clearly there's more. How do you know this?”
Wick waggled a finger. “People like Praetor Goule. The weird stories you hear about them are not all just bullshit.”
Jake nodded while he wrote everything down. “I'd buy that, maybe not three weeks ago but now? Now I think everyone's filter is turned down a few notches.”
Wick kept going. “So we started training and got geared up and tried things, then next week went in again, with Grunt and Mister I joining us. While inside we found Mosh and Hari who were alone...”
Mosh waved. “I told em I was a good goblin! Boss got me, thankfully, before Grunt ate me.”
Hari frowned. “I don't think Grunt eat people.”
Wick shrugged. “Never anyone I liked, at least. So... Hari's party had fallen to a monster and his goblin army which Corvayne and Grunt then killed. We rescued her and made it a goal to get her and Mosh home, though because she was going to end up in a hostile place we explored the third floor for treasure and found a highly dangerous castle where Corvayne nearly got himself killed himself, one of many times.”
Corvayne leaned away from Wick towards Jake. “Just for the record: This chain armor I found by the dragon and guards that nearly killed me probably saved my life a half dozen times.”
Wick picked up a marker cap and landed a hit on Corvayne's shoulder, doing no damage but carrying her intent. Corvayne tried winking, and Wick just shook her head at him, then refocused on writing and looking at the room.
She pointed to the next event with her marker. “We also went to a town, where we learned about 'People of the Tower'. There's people who call them NPCs but I prefer to think of them as extremely innocent ... Jake! Jake, make sure people understand that even if they act... odd... they are people and can grow and learn to act more normal.”
Jake nodded. “I visited the town with you, I remember.”
“Okay, but I don't want Banner to have to kill a bunch of teenagers who find a cat woman or something and think it's a game with 0 rules.”
“I'll add it to the list.” Jake nodded.
“Right. So, we cleared the Tower up through five floors, and we thought Hari would get sent back so we got her ready to run out of the dungeon she came in on, alone, but she stayed with us, and moved in with Corvayne for a while...” Wick sucked on her cheek a little. Hari took the moment to scoot her chair up and start brushing his leg with hers.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Corvayne spoke at the same time Jake did. “Not relevant” “Not important.”
Wick laughed. “You two! I think it's important enough.”
Gary agreed loudly which made Wick pause. “Anyway, we heard of a UFO crashing after a week of Hari adjusting, and we went out into the woods where a military unit had blown itself up on a kinetic shield. Turns out that was Nyxion's shield. Nyx, our troubled noble, and Lady Blood Claw, his non-human heavy, made an unapproved landing.”
Lady Blood Claw pinched the bridge of her nose. “I want to make it official that I argued heavily to NOT have that title.”
Jake paused his jotting of notes. “What's wrong with being a Lady?”
Nyxion rolled his eyes at her objection instead. “Heavy suited what you did better, a lieutenant implies there's more troops under you.”
Mister I added. “Perhaps we should amend as well that Nyxion is the grandson of the disposed Emperor Nyxion Augustus before the current royal family instituted a Hostile takeover.”
Wick threw her arms up. “Yes but we could mention it later, the main thing is that they broke into Brine's Old Town warehouse... Officer Jake don't glare previous time line. You too Jimmy. I was saying, they broke in, in literally an event there is only oral evidence for, looking for a crate that contained an artifact, realized it was a 'dud' and went chasing after where they assumed it had come from. Because they had fought us and wrecked our beloved rock warehouse, we built a hover cycle and chased them out into the desert, ending up at the Day Star mine.”
Jake, Brines, and Hari all perked up at hoverbike entering the conversation.
Wick was thinking a little. “The situation is similar to what happened in this time line, with the managers having been disposed of while a group of mercenaries took over camp, in this case looting a bunch of Tower gear they used the miners to gather. They planned to nuke the entire place, but we managed to save the whole mine, with Corvayne getting a little fried. When the mercenaries were dead, we ended up negotiating with Nyx and LBC.”
“We were stuck on this turd of a rock so I like to think it's a mutual hostage situation.” Nyx rolled his eyes.
Corvayne held up a hand. “I want to ask him...”
Lady Blood Claw rolled her eyes. “On the next loop, we were in the forest where we landed, minus our space ship and whatever had been bleed out of time by the monk. There. Happy?”
It did and didn't answer Corvayne's questions. “But why?”
Wick thought about it. “Maybe it's because something here marks when a person starts interacting with... something, like when they set foot on Cascadia? Or perhaps, when they see me? I also don't know why it can't do anything with gear that Argyle destroyed. He trashed most of your spines too yet they came back, as with clothes too. Let's get back to the thread. We formed a group to try to both sell the items and help Nyxion get stronger so he could get revenge on a certain figure...”
“It's the creepy wizard who shows up behind the Emperor whenever he does events. Right?” Jake waved his pen around to gesture at Nyxion. “Sorry Mr Augustus. I do my home work.”
“Never call a noble mister, Lord is the appropriate-” Nyx was drowned out by Hari giving him the rasberry.
“Too late, we know you already.” Hari said, folding her arms.
Nyx went back to resting. “Fine. No respect from the rabble, I tell you.”
Wick huffed, and tapped the board. “Focus class. Okay. Great. So, We formed a team, rented out a nice place in Old Town, and we were getting ready to start running the Tower seriously... and a squad of helicopters and APCs started moving into town towards Old Town, with orders to find me.”
Jake nodded. “If the mine almost got nuked, it'd have woken him up. We were pretty sure he operated out in the desert somewhere.”
Wick nudged Corvayne. “Add seeing what he was guarding to the list. Anyway, we got pushed to the point where I activated an escape plan on a trader ship that was at the space port.”
Jake put his pencil down. “That's always a bad idea, there's so many sensors on the Space Port that when a mouse farts it's a 10 page report.”
Wick nodded. “Well, we didn't have Grunt. If the big lug was there, it might have been different. As it was, Argyle attacked us without even talking, knocking us to the ground then picking us off on the runway one by one. He hit me last, and then I woke up in my apartment with something like a hangover from hell, could barely move or breath, no staff wounds through me. So I know something is wrong, but I have this urge to go... go for a drive, and I ask Mister I if Corvayne made it, and he looked at me crazy and wanted to know who Corvayne was. Looked at the date, and it's April 9 again, back to the middle of summer.”
Mister I nods. “I thought she had forgotten to take her pills, but she'd never wanted to actually go on a car ride anywhere, so I took her for a ride and the entire time I was thinking of friends I thought I had visited, it was like an echo of the time before. Corvayne helped jog my memory, seeing him walking down the road, I recalled grilling with him!”
Wick slapped her pant leg. “Don't mention at all that I was happy to see him because I had seen him die hours earlier!”
Mister I nods. “There was no crying and hugging. At all”
“If you were not there I probably would have baptized your back seat.” Wick grinned wickedly.
Mister I rubbed his mouth with a sleeve from the robe he was wearing. “I would say my truck is plenty holy, given it belongs to me.”
Corvayne hesitated. “Even... uh... the back seat?”
The monk looked offended. “Young Corvayne... ESPECIALLY the back seat! Ha ha ha!”
Wick looked a little sick. “I'm never going to be able to ride inside the truck again!”
“Outside also somewhat blessed.” Mister I shrugged.
“Okay, so by this point a day had passed, so we decided to do the only sensible thing and rush to the Dungeon to see if it was there.” Wick pointed at Mosh and Hari. “We also wanted to clear it out so you two didn't have the same poor experience. When we got there, we found civilians inside.”
Seru lept up. “That's where I come in!”
Gary raised his hand. “Oww, number 1 deciple!”
Jake tapped his pen. “Don't we all know it?”
Dawn shook her head. “All new to me. Might have to up her dosage doc.”
“Don't compare me to a doctor! Very rude.” Mister I acted offended.
Mosh laughs. “If it helps Icariii, I think of you mostly as an easy mark for chess.”
The monk rolled his eyes. “Says the little ball of sweat who clutches his head so hard it turns yellow.”
Wick rolls her hand, eager to wrap it up. “Well, we had seen Seru and possibly Jake and Gary before, as skeletons right at the start, so we had to split objectives. They needed to be guided out safe and sound, but if we left Hari and Mosh to get attacked by wild goblins we'd be bad friends. So we dragged them around the dungeon and trained them, much to their complaints. That included removing photo evidence of us, because we had just came back from dying and didn't want to repeat it by attracting the murder-monk's attention.”
Seru huffed. “You tossed my phone off a cliff!”
Corvayne narrowed his eyes. “You insulted Wick. Of course I'm going to respond.”
He snuck a glance at his lovely princess girlfriend and saw her smile.
Jake took his hat off and ran a finger through his hair. “I didn't realize I was going to walk out of there in a week with a better body then a year of going to the gym. Also, you pretty much kidnapped us by not just getting us directly to the exit.”
Corvayne kept the ball rolling. “After a detour, and Seru threatening to reveal us to the world, we managed to get them out alive. But Seru tried to blackmail us over the treasure at the end.”
“I wanted to come along! Why do you sound angry I totally helped us!” Seru whined.
Wick pointed the marker at Seru. “Yeah, but... remembering it makes me mad! You think it was fun? First you hit me like a truck after I took your phone, then you ran off the wrong direction!” Wick sighed. “Me and Corvayne both agreed to try to save you, despite you not really deserving it then. Don't get all teary eye'd, you're growing on me. A little. I'm still annoyed you slept with Corvayne.”
Seru popped her hips out. “Who can resist?”
Jake raised a single hand, still writing.
Corvayne cleared his throat. “We had to split the party here. Wick left to tell Mister I what happened, and get more help with Grunt. I ran up to floor 6 to find Seru. We had to camp out, and she needed comfort and kept bugging me until I said yes to go to sleep.”
Gary shook his head. “You and Seru had s-s-sex?!”
Everyone turned to look at Gary with some level of eye twitching as Corvayne turned back to try to figure out what everyone was thinking. Hari held her hand out. “You have eyes, right? No suprise.”
Gary sighed. “I had thought master was above worldly temptations.”
Corvayne shook his head. “I'm just a guy.” He was thinking about how they found the inn before the boss fight, an infinite space that could supply him with a whole bunch of Wicks. Temptation.
Hari nodded. “When he gives in, he gives it his all!”
Corvayne held his hands up. “This is going to take all afternoon. Let's cut it down. We reformed as a group of 7, and went through floors six through ten. The sixth floor was hide and seek with robots and zombies in a neighborhood, on the next floor Seru took a life threatning injury and I got my eye shot out by a porcupine from hell. We healed through it, and had to backtrack when we ran into a floor that was stuffed with monsters, instead meeting up with some nice goblins who we rescued from rabid ones and went to their town...”
He heard Dawn mutter. “He probably could have skipped most of that section.”
Mosh poked him. “Boss what the hell! I wanna go see it! The goblin city!”
Wick nodded. “We gave them the basics on using mend and worshiping Lythandies, as well as the weapon skills that Corvayne uses, the simple ones.”
Corvayne nodded. “Put that on the list of things to do before you got to war, Mosh. Anyway, we made some friends, then the next floor was an empty version of my old town. When we went down to fight the five floor guardian but Grunt decided to go help some miners stuck before a the big monster...”
Gary coughed. “Just call them Bosses Master. It's clear the Tower is a game of some sort, right?”
Hari pointed at him. “Don't make baseless guesses! Bad! Will sic goblin on you again!”
Mosh acted menacing, and Gary pulled the covers over his head.
Wick cleared her throat. “Well, the boss was a 1 on 1 fight, against Corvayne's old fiancee...”
Corvayne rolled his eyes. “I won. She looked like a water monster because of a curse, I wouldn't trust anything you heard. She was trying to kill me.”
Wick added. “Interestingly, I sometimes want to kill you too, when you go and risk your life on something stupid instead of sticking with us and trusting us to help you!”
“Wick I'll get you ice cream after we finish this catch-up thing.”
Jake flipped his notebook closed. “I think I can fill in the rest. You learned who Argyle is, he learned about you...”
Wick held up a hand. “There's more, like he nearly caught us at Seru's house, and we slipped away from him twice in a different tower where we learned that Corvayne has a huge bounty on him for taking him alive to someone that the Tower itself forgot.”
Jake stopped. “Bounties?”
“There's ways to track people in the tower.” Corvayne said. “I mean, if there wasn't the answer to most of life’s problems would be to just wander away.”
“Yeah, I know, I spent a few years helping our missing person's department. Except when you ID a body and it's someone who fell in a river in winter.”
Corvayne perked up. “I hope I get to see snow, I've always read about how you can sculpt it.”
Wick looked at everyone else. “Please don't ruin it for Corvayne.” Corvayne blinked.
Nyxion looked at everyone else looking away puzzled. “He knows that it barely snows here, it's all freezing fog, right?”
Mosh patted Corvayne's arm. “I'm sure it freezes and snows real bad further north. We'll go play in the snow buddy, all right?”
Corvayne started to stand and Wick gently took his arm and he found himself sitting. “Just stick it out we are almost done. Jake was sort of right, we hid from Argyle, trapped in Old Town, set up traps for him, and had a grueling fight. It's a miracle none of us died.”
Dawn snorted a little, and Corvayne caught Mister I getting tight lipped.
Jake tapped his notebook again. “So, you have a powerful enemy in the empire, possibly the Baron L'Tideru, who might be sending a massive army to crush Cascadia?”
Corvayne nodded. “Yeah, so if you don't mind, I'd like to spend some time with Wick, alone time.”
He then vigorously made up for those few days away from her.